9-15-2014

9-15-2014

Date: Mon, 15 Sep 2014 09:29:46 +0800
Subject: back to the rural world
From: eric.heaton@myldsmail.net
To: heatonjudy@hotmail.com

Hello the family!

This week has gone by really well.  I have been working hard to be able to find my way around here in the countryside and have just been having fun talking with my new companion.  the people here are nice and so far there's not really anything to complain about.

The week started off pretty well after we ended the fun part of Monday we had a big BBQ to go to where most of the ward would be attending, and we had a good 2-3 investigators that would be going as well, so we were really excited as that would be my chance to meet the ward.  The BBQ went really well however we only got one investigator there, but I had a good opportunity to talk with most of the ward members here (theres only about 12 really active members right now) so I was trying my best to just be able to recognize them as well as to get to know each of their circumstances.

After that we moved onto Tuesday where we would normally have our District training meeting, but because Donggang, or Dongkang as they like to spell it, is pretty far away from most of the other missionaries or other branches we are just a 2 man district with me being the District leader, but to me anyway that didn't really mean anything because there's really nobody to be worrying about or thinking about other than my companion in my district, so that's kind of funny.  But it did mean that I had to prepare a good hour and a half talk or have something to talk about with my companion.  It was kind of fun and kind of silly all at the same time.

Next was me just trying to get used to teaching the English class here.  My companion had warned me that the class here had a few kids in it, and so I just kind of figured that I would take a room that had a couple of toys, the kids would be entertained and I could teach the people who were really coming to learn English, so I made a intermediate English plan just thinking that most of the people English ability would be to a level that they could do some basic reading and writing, but when I got there I quickly realized that I was mistaken and that more than half of the class was little kids and that their English, while not bad, was not to the point where I thought it would be, so I didn't really have a plan for it, but it was fun seeing the different kind of class that I would have to be teaching.

As for the rest of the week it was pretty much missionary work as usual, working hard and trying to find as many people as we possibly can to invite to come unto Christ.  It has been lots of fun and I am enjoying my time here in Taiwan.  Although the weather is still pretty hot, we are keeping cool.

Hope that you all are having a great time. I know that the work that I am doing here is good and that this is the place that Christ want's me to be right now.  I know that this church is true and is able to help all those that choose to live by its teachings.  this is the message that I am trying to share right now and it is all going good. =)

Have a great week! Love you all

9-8-2014

9-8-2014

Date: Mon, 8 Sep 2014 13:41:34 +0800
Subject: The Mini movecall strikes!
From: eric.heaton@myldsmail.net
To: heatonjudy@hotmail.com

Hello Family!!!

Well this week was really good, me and my companion had a goal that we wanted to really try to hit one of our mission standards which was to get 20 lessons in a week.  We have been able to usually hit some of the other mission standards that are just a number that our mission president whinkds that every companionship should be able to hit or at least shoot for.  But because of that we figured that we would need to get at least 3 lessons every day, and so that was our plan, to give our best effort to hitting that 3 lessons a day goal, as well as to keep our already progressing investigators progressing.

It was a really fun time this week as well because one of the holidays that came around during the first part of my mission is here again, it is the mid autumn festival or the Lunar festival.  I think its something like fir first full moon in the middle of fall or something like that but basically what everybody does is just start having some fun Taiwanese barbecues, shoot off some fireworks (that we are not allowed to touch) and just be with family and friends.  So being the missionaries that we are, of course the ward is super willing to invite us to come to their family barbecues and their get together's, it has been a really fun week and one where you never really go hungry.

Theres 2 BBQ stories that come with this though, first off is you have to understand that a lot of Taiwanese people just live in apartments that have upwards of 14 or more floors, and so they usually have a lot of neighbors that they haven't met, so during the festival one of the members invited us to her apartments BBQ with the thought that she personally could just meet her neighbors and that we could just proselyte to them =) however as it turned out when we got there, everybody was huddled pretty close to their families and there was just not a lot of socializing going on, so we weren't able to get the proselyting that we were after.  But the next day we had a BBQ that some member from the other ward invited us to, we weren't really sure who the member was but all of the other missionaries were going so we decided that we could go as well.  When we got there however there was a person that we recognized, a Ms. Huang who during my second week in Tainan we had tracted into her house, she had told us that her sister was a member of our church but she lived in Mainland China, but she comes back every year for this festival and always invites the missionaries over.  We had not really met anybody in the ward at that time but we remembered the experience and finally during the BBQ what she told us had come true! crazy!

Well now for what the subject is talking about, the Mini Move Call.  Because missionaries in the office have to have a 3 week training period to be able to effectively do the missionary work there, they will sometimes have a transfer 3 weeks into the transfer, which normally only moves a few people, however this time I got moved and and now living further south than I was before. I have been moved to the furthest county south called Ping Dong ( ) in a city called Dong Gang ( ) which is right next to the beach, with my new companion Elder Hansen, I was super sad to get the call that I was leaving Tainan, but I am also excited to be able to work here in Dong gang because its a lot like my first area, but a little more rural.

Well its a bit of a longer E-mail this week but I'm doing good and having a great time.  Hopefully you are all doing well.  Love you all

Have a great week!!!

9-1-2014

9-1-2014

Date: Mon, 1 Sep 2014 12:03:47 +0800
Subject: The busy week
From: eric.heaton@myldsmail.net
To: heatonjudy@hotmail.com

Hello the family!

This week we were nice and busy, working hard to hit some of the goals that we had personally set for the week and just trying to work hard.  It was a lot of fun and we saw a ton of success because of it.

The week started with a really good P-day where afterwards we were able to get 2 really good lessons as well as being able to find a new investigator.  However the day before that (Sunday) my companions tire had popped, and as neither of us (or most of the missionaries in the mission) had a patch kit, we had to wait for what we thought would be Monday to fix the patch, but in the end we didn't have any time to get it fixed on that day.

Now in Taiwan there are 2 really big bike brands that most people buy their stuff from, the bigger one is easily Giant, which you will see all over Taiwan, its really easy to find and a lot of random bike shops are supported by giant.  Then there is the other one which is Merida.  There are a lot less of those stores around but they still make good quality stuff.  So these two companies are in a huge competition and so sometimes if you go to say a Giant store with a Merida bike the staff will sometimes be a little less helpful with you because you bought the competitions bike.  Kind of weird but thats just kind of how business works I guess.  Anyway almost all of the missionary bikes are the Giant brand bikes, but my companions is the Merida and he personally has found that a lot of Giant stores are just like that, so we spend some time biking a bit out of the way to find a Merida store to be able to fix his bike, but the cool thing is that when we got there, we discovered that the owner is super cool as well as the people that go there and we were able to share a short message with all of the people in the bike store.  Lots of fun =)

Finally as for the last story, down here in Tainan the missionaries have planned out that they would play basketball every Saturday, just to have something to do as well as to have an activity to invite investigators to come to.  However my companion he loves to play soccer, and lately we have been able to find a group of people that would meet at the exact same time as the elders normally play Basketball, and they all get together and play soccer, so this week we decided to have a bit of a contacting activity by going out with them to play some soccer, we had tried to do this quite a few times before however each time that we really have time to be able to join them, the people that we were able to meet that go to the soccer activity decided that they weren't going to go that week, so we haven't been able to do that for awhile.  But this week my companion decided that regardless of weather or not our contacts are going there we were going to go there and just play with whoever is playing soccer there.  Saddly as we arrived there was no one on the field, but we were able to find some guys nearby that were playing volleyball and were able to play a bit with them as well as invite them to come to church.

Well that's about it for this week, it's been mostly missionary work without a ton of other things, but it has been a good week and I'm doing well.  Hope that you all are having a great week!!

Love you all!

Elder Heaton